Well, yesterday’s mini-experiment was, in many ways, a huge success. So, what did we learn? First, we learned that we could generate two 50 line stories in just one day. Well done, and thanks to everyone who participated. I have had a quick look at the two tales and offer the following thoughts -
- Whereas the men got off to a shaky start with their story pitching all over the place, the women were far more focused from the get go. However, the guys recovered well, and produced something that almost made sense.
- Both of the stories contained more than their fair share of surreal content (think clowns and dentists with talking cats drawn on their hands).
- The female version hinted at John having a relationship (perhaps with the mysterious Dolores), whereas the male version focused more on the physical attributes of an attractive hygienist.
- Both sides played the ‘it was just a dream’ card.
So, I have included both stories in other posts to make them easier to read. What do you think? Any other observations?
Anyway, my feeling is that there really is a great research tool here. Could you compare different countries and quickly get the essence of a culture, or perhaps have people with different personalities do it. Thoughts?
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The way it was heading when I joined in (the female one), I thought it was shaping up well and wanted to know what was going to happen. I looked over at the male one at that stage and saw a complete jumble and an uninteresting story whereas the female one had the “something’s about to happen” aspect. But it only takes one or two with different personalities to take it completely in a different direction and now I don’t think ours is any better. We did however have much greater co-ordination skills and got straight on task, accepting each other’s contribution whereas the males couldn’t seem to get off the ground. When they did get their organisation on track, they did alright, it just took much longer. But some female minds work in a manner more similar to male minds and vice versa.
I have to say though that as a scriptwriter and film maker and perhaps even just as a human being, I DESPISE the “it was all just a dream” ending to stories. It’s commonly known as the most cringe-worthy way out and they won’t even accept it at film school unless you do something majorly interesting with it, Fight Club style or the likes.
Very cool experiment but… I’m not so sure it’s a research tool in the making. How do you analyze something as qualitative as a short-story in a rigorous manner? How do you make comparisons between different stories and decide on their significance? I don’t want to sound like a nay-sayer, but these are pretty serious problems…
My contribution was early in the story. I actually did one sentence. (Mine was the one saying that the cat knows teeth…). I think it would’ve been better if everyone stuck to just one sentence. Both sides had entries that went beyond just one.
With more stories, I think we’ll get more of an idea of how men and women think.
If I may be bold, I’d like to see this tried again, this time, keeping to the one sentence rule, and one other rule: no “dream” or “drug-state” stories. Too easy.
It was fun, though. Thanks!
From my views, I saw that the men’s story (which I took part in hehe…) had shorter sentences but overall was more surreal whereas in the women’s story had way longer sentences but more realistic even though they both ended up being a dream and it is more detailed as the five senses were described more in the women’s than the men’s. Great Experiment Richard. :Thumbs Up:
Would be interesting to repeat this experiment in a few weeks with the first line containing a female character.
Good point Michael – how about we have them rated along these dimensions by people who don’t know which is which?
This was fun! Some observations, for what it’s worth… The women finished their story more quickly, which is consistent with thinking they are more story-oriented than men. The women’s story is more people oriented somehow. More men didn’t stick to the one sentence each rule, which is consistent with thinking men are more independent or less submissive or they just don’t want to listen. And the men had an inside joke, a very nerdy one as well, about Douglas Adams’answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. (If we women had a very feminine inside joke as well, I didn’t get it.)
It would be interesting to run the stories trough UTexas-psychologist James Pennebaker’s LIWC-program, which measures all kinds of language variables and relates them to psychological characteristics…
PS I just did the LIWC online: men used more self-references (I, me, my) and less social words than women. Those were the largest differences.
I love this stuff.
This kind of game is played in acting workshops when developing improvisational skills. It takes a lot of practice to tell a coherent story with a bunch of strangers, although you can get good at it pretty quickly.
A little understanding of storytelling form is required but the most important thing is the willingness to go with the flow. When each player only offers something that’s a reasonable evolution of what’s gone before (known in the trade as Accepting) then the stories start making sense and – weirdly – having meanings and themes.
When each person tries to write something that’s Interesting or that’s Important To The Story, it swings wildly out of control as new ideas are flung in more quickly than they can be dealt with. When you combine that with total non-sequiturs the only reasonable response to the chaos is to use a get-out clause – the dream.
I’d say the female writers were more successful with regards to Acceptance, with the most coherent section overall being their opening. It showed a real sensitivity to the flow of events.
Regarding the science, I’ve no experience in designing experiments, but I think it might be possible to evaluate for this continuity issue on a entry-by-entry basis. We might make some observations on the co-operation skills of different sexes.
Next, let’s play word-at-a-time!
The concept of Acceptance is really interesting – I agree that the females certainly displayed more of that than the men – certainly early on.
These mini vignettes are a subtle route into the psyche of the self, capturing a snapshot of mood and sentiment. I actually contributed to both stories, it seemed to me that the masculine narrative entered a cul de sac and struggled to escape. I am writing short stories as faction taken from ethnographies in Art Galleries. What do different people think about the one object, and why? Perhaps you could try this…
I’d also be interested in a left handed and a right handed version of the story telling. See if it plays out the assumption that us lefties are more creative…
http://www.okathleen.wordpress.com
From what I read, men tended to intrude more into the story. This happens visibly in two seperate cases:
1. the story was completely changed from a rather serious tale about a dentist visit to something absurd when the dentist showed his painted hand. After that, it seemed to be an “all limits are gone, let’s just have some fun” story.
2. The use of the dream card in the men’s tale seems abruptly forced in because apparently someone believed the story was in an impasse, and that it was his goddamned right to change it. That clearly failed because someone else missed the wake up post and wrote something else, while the poster after that went with the dream idea, only to have the whole thing forcibly pulled back into the dream world by a fifth poster. It made for incoherent reading and made that part of the story seem rather forced. The conclusion: some men do not refresh the page before they post their own entry, and some men try to put situations forcibly to their own hand.
In the case of the women, absurdity ensued as well, but started off less abruptly. It could have started very easily with the CLOWN WANTED add, but people decided not to use that until later in the story. The invasion of absurdity was more reasonable, because authors could ignore the entire clown-plot completely without damaging the storyline. Compared to the male’s story, the use of the dream card was different, being used at the end of the story, more as a way to round the story up and bring it to an end.
What is fun to see btw is how, even when the dream card was used, reality was still brutally messed with: the dream woman is shown to be reality and in the man’s version the main character writes himself out of existence after reading his own tale on the blog. Both of those were at the end, and probably because of our need to make a story somehow, somewhat, meaningful, or at least give it a twist. I am certain that M. Night Shyamalan would have been proud of you.
I’d be more interested to see how it turned out with a wider audience, it seems that the stories may have turned out relatively sane because it was limited to readers of the blog. Any ideas on how to cast the net wider for another run?
I meant the doctor was saying ‘erro’ not the cat! it was just a picture for the kids!
[...] Richard Wiseman did a story-writing experiment in which he pitched the women against the men. The results are rather depressing, but for the original stories see here and here; for organised write-ups see here and here; and for analysis see here and here. [...]